


Sampaguita

by Mauser_Frau



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Backstory, Black Comedy, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Complex Relationship, Dead animals, Dildo Riding, F/M, Gore, I know what you people are here for, M/M, Masturbation, Multi, Piss, Pretentious Literary References, Scars, Smut, Squick, Squirting, Troy Calypso bottoming, Troyreen, Twincest, Tyreen being Tyreen, Tyreen’s PoV, a picture of Lilith’s asshole, a siren fangirl with issues, consensual sex in the missionary position, copulating mantas, dead dove do not eat, devil may care hookups, hallucinogen use, hence the need for OCs, most everything graphic, orgies & beef jerky, preemptively warning for baby-eating too, rather a lot of drool, relationship drama, remembered to mention the vomit this time, supernatural cannibalism, this is why we can’t have nice things, weird sex fantasies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:08:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25892620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mauser_Frau/pseuds/Mauser_Frau
Summary: Tyreen and Troy take one last shot at making a name for themselves on ordinary people’s terms, so much as anybody on Pandora qualifies as ‘ordinary’.  Slight setback: Tyreen’s not getting enough of anything she needs.  Oh, and it’s raining.Basically, the 70’s-style exploitation movie staring the Calypso Twins that you never wanted.FollowsSatellite, but exists on its own terms.  Please bend, fold and read the tags.  Updates for this one are going to be erratic, so subscribe or stalk at your preference.1/12/2021: I think I set a new record for bodily functions mentioned in a Tyreen PoV story with this one...
Relationships: Troy Calypso/Original Character(s), Troy Calypso/Tyreen Calypso
Kudos: 24
Collections: Grimeverse





	1. A Prologue; An ECHO Log

EZ ECHORecorder v.2.3.41009g

Message_000.001.547-2.reco2

Date: NOT_SET

Topic: NOT_SET

Username RECORDING: LHC_7010

Username RECEIVING: NOT_SET

Status: KEEP_00I-DEF

Message: START

Hey, Lil Ty. It’s your mama. Or whatever you’re calling me by the time I let you have this. I’m not going to choose for you. You’d never be happy with that.

Today’s the day you realized your brother looks different from you. I was expecting you’d throw a tantrum when you found out you didn’t get a penis, but no, you took the news like a champ. Your brother seems more disappointed he has one. Anyway, I’m proud of you. Especially since your. Emotional. Regulation. Is. Not. Great. Heh! 

You know it’s almost like sometimes, you’re so determined to be you that you refuse to change or grow up or do anything different. It’s interesting ‘cause you’re one of the most changeable people I’ve ever met,  _ speaking _ of emotional regulation. I don’t know, I kind of think when you get older, you’re going to turn out  _ passionate _ . But for right now, you’re my lil Petra Pan and your brother is, well, you know him. You got to be fishies together.

There are some other things I want to tell you about what happened today, but I don’t think you’re quite old enough to hear. I still want to say them while I’m thinking them. And ah, surprise. More unexpected knowledge. Well, no— hopefully I’ll have braced you by now.

I think you’ve caught on that I bleed every so often. It’s about one Old Earth month, not that those have anything to do with the months here on  _ νεκροταφείο _ . Well, you’ll bleed too someday. I know it sounds scary. Or it is scary right now because it just happened for the first time. 

Look, it’s going to hurt and it’s going to be messy, but it’s not anything to worry about. It’s something your body does. If your Dad or your brother gives you any shit— I said shit in a recording about periods I’m making for my toddler; what the hell, self? —about how you’re supposed to be embarrassed? Oh my God, Lil Ty. You’ve never been embarrassed about anything and puberty is not the time to start. 

Anyway, what’s going on is that all those neat things I promised you’ve got in your tummy? Well, your  _ uterus _ makes this special tissue in case you decide you want to have your own fishies, but it doesn’t last forever. So it comes out and it’s mostly blood, but there’s going to be other gooey bits. They’re a little gross sometimes, but they’re from inside you and maybe that makes them cool too? You also shouldn’t be ashamed if you want to put some under the microscope or squish it around in your hand. I did that when I was your age and it’s good to, you know, know yourself. …I sound like a college radio announcer.

I’ve got a lot more diagrams and stuff to read about how this works. Short of it: once a month, uterus decompresses. Smarts sometimes. Makes a mess. I happen to be pretty damn good (ack, I did it again) at mess prevention, so let me know if you want some pointers. You might want to figure it out on your own. And that’s great too!

So, enough on the technical stuff. I don’t want you to think being female is just ‘I have no penis and I bleed’. You’re not just anything. And there’s going to be so much else running through your body and your head.

Women are not afraid of blood. You might have read some things that acted like you should be. No, Dearheart, Starlight, Daughter of Mine. That is a  _ lie _ . I’ve tried to tell you without telling you, but I’m putting it in small words now. Don’t. Please. You can’t be yourself that way. 

I remember too when we realized who you are, what your marks mean, going to your father:  _ Gawd _ , if our son’s got the exact same thing, we have a little John Keats beautiful-boy and he’ll have to learn some… 

Some different… 

S-Sorry I keep talking about him when this is supposed to be us! Ahaha, I also remember telling Dad that  _ usually _ women are Chthonic and men are Apollonic for about the forty-seventh time and he still didn’t get it, but there was a light in his eyes that day. Like you are the power to destroy and you’re also the source of life itself. That’s how amazing women, especially vampire-persona-women, are. You almost got an academic point through Typhon DeLeon’s skull. 

I almost don’t believe I have a little Geraldine. That’s so awesome. I can’t wait to see how you work your Psyleech going forward. It’s going to be so exciting. I can’t even imagine what else you can do. Ahhhh!

But even ordinary women are that way, you know? We’re tied to our bodies and that’s not a weakness. That’s real power. Your power is just bigger and brighter and everybody can see it. I get Chthonic things are supposed to be dark. I guess your darkness is the space between your markings or something you keep in your chest or your uterus. I’m not judging where. That’s yours.

It’s not uncommon— no, actually, it’s pretty common —for women other places to change their hormones so they don’t bleed or they won’t have fishies or they’ll feel younger than they are. I don’t hate them for doing that, but I think they’re missing part of the trip, like how good food tastes the week before your period or what it’s like to long with your whole body or to know yourself in the present. They’re part of you. So hey, it’s as OK to cry because your body needs to cry as it is to cry because you accidentally snorfled up a couple lightning bugs and they don’t glow anymore. It’s OK to be you.

And Lil Ty, if you wanted to change after all I’m saying, I would help you if I could. I can’t and… 

You’d have to tell me about you in that other place. Ah, you always do. But for now, where I can’t. I never did. I didn’t want that. I wanted me as I was and maybe that’s a little bit why you exist. You can still always do that.

I don’t want you to feel bad about who you are. That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t mean your period or what you’ve got between your legs. I don’t mean what you have in your heart or even… even what I might have taken away from you trying to help you. 

Please, just… 

Your whole you’s capable of bringing you joy, maybe, especially your body if you listen to it and it’s OK to do that. Ah, Ty’s gonna tell me it’s creepy to say that, but it wasn’t where I grew up. I know this isn’t the easiest place in the world to want, but don’t be afraid to want. Not ever.

Listen.

I know you can put all of that energy inside of you into something amazing. Not just your sex, your gender, your magic, your heart. All of you. As you are. Now as a kid. Now as you’re hearing this and you’re kind of not a kid anymore. 

You are an experience and you always will be. That’s what I hope for you today and whenever this recording ends up being a thing.

Anyway, I know you’ve got questions. You always do. I’m in the other room when you’re ready.

I’ll talk to you soon, my most wonderful little woman.

Message: END

Playback Count Updated: DATE_NOT_SET

Playback Count: COUNT_RESET

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 12/5/2020


	2. Leaving Dr. Black's; Who The Hell Is Dr. Black?

“You want to eat me, don’t you,” said Dr. Black. This seemed like something she should have made a big deal about sooner if it was, in fact, a big deal. It sure as hell wasn’t  _ news _ .

Tyreen stared at her. Hard. Then stalked off without an answer. 

Dr. Black was a small, fat woman with a crooked jaw and a crooked smile and a penchant for wearing hoop skirts with no panties underneath. “Keeps things cool!” she insisted. In fact, she’d been downright missionary about the practice to her other patients. But she didn’t press Tyreen, didn’t follow her now, didn’t even watch her go. She went back to talking to Troy. “Like I was saying, I could pierce your ears before you head out.” 

“Ah, I’m still gonna pass on that. Thin skin,” said Troy.

That discussion they’d had about fifty times in the past few weeks. It didn’t concern Tyreen and one more rerun wasn’t going to change all that much except when she and her brother got off of Dr. Black’s property: a weird mix of Old Earth farmhouse aesthetics and geodesic greenhouses. 

The path leading down to the road sported a rough fence that had been white at one time or another. Tyreen paused, picked at a scrap of paint.

The day cast an uneasy, yellow-gray. It reminded her of the one where she’d taken a bullet to the belly, except heavier in the humidity. Really, a stupid association to reach for. It would always some kind of storm on Pandora and it  _ was  _ storming somewhere West of them. The mountains had gone to mist beneath the clouds. A tart, dirty smell laced the air.

Tyreen shifted. She poked at her would-be extra hole to see if it had decided to do anything weird given the air pressure drop. The bullet scar was still sealed up, still sore if she fussed with it. Dr. Black had mostly fixed the associated muscle damage. As for the bullet itself, “Oh, no. We’re not touching that without a full operating theater. That thing’s welded in place. Enjoy your souvenir, honey.”

The thing felt like a swollen extra ovary shifting around when she craned to her right.

Cool. 

The wind picked up for a handful of seconds, all movement and moisture. Tyreen sucked some in through her mouth. She could taste whatever was making that smell besides this faint impulse on the tip of her nerves. Something tricked alive out East. All splotches of life attracted her, this glow behind her eyes and pinpricks of need deep in her veins. She recognized that this something was definitely quick in the old sense, but also some flavor of more, growling brighter and bitinger the past few days. She closed her eyes and listened with her teeth. 

Closer by, life crept up a fence post. Just a feather worm. Tyreen liked eating those and this one became hers in a dart of movement. Wasn’t much to it. She hardly came out of her skin to devour the thing. The worm crunched into sand and glass. She tasted umami for half an instant, then propped her chin on her empty hand. 

“I wasn’t expecting her to, hmm, convey wistfulness,” said Dr. Black.

“Secretly, she’s pretty damn wistful,” replied Troy. “If by wistful you mean ‘enjoys scenting the air’.” 

(Well, that was what she was doing.)

“How about people talking about her where she can hear us?” 

He gestured  _ it’s fine _ .

(Well, it was fine.)

Dr. Black nodded. She rubbed in closer to Troy. Not a threat— she was too soft and moved more like a puppet than a person. She smiled her crooked smile. “If you stayed… You know, I wouldn’t cry if you stayed.” To that, she glanced sidelong to the place Tyreen slouched in the desert’s way.

“Didn’t think you would,” Troy said.

“She could do wetwork. We could find you a decent new arm and a mechanic’s apprenticeship.” 

“We got other plans.”

“I figured. Just wanted to let you know in case they weren’t A plans or a year from now you needed a break.”

“We’ll see what happens. Thanks again, by the way. Appreciate it.” He held his hand out to her.

“Anytime.” Dr. Black brought both of hers down on him, rapping on his shooter’s glove. “Goodbye, big honey. Goodbye, little honey.”

He swung up to catch her grip.

Tyreen meanwhile lazed away from the fence, calling over her shoulder, “Heh. Not that little, you jerkoff.” She blew a kiss the same instant the wind stirred again.

Troy extracted himself from the farewell shake. He caught up to his sister in a handful of strides.

“I don’t feel like driving,” said Tyreen.

“Good thing I do,” said Troy.

They zigzagged, switching places before they ever got to the truck. They’d had the thing repainted since helping themselves to the it and its owner. Black trucks boiled in the desert, so they’d gone with silver to almost match the cover that almost fit the bed. Its jury-rigged moon roof was polymer so scratched it looked like alabaster. The seats they’d repaired with arms company patches from dead people’s jackets. 

Tyreen climbed in and plopped her boots on the dashboard. 

Troy fussed with the driver’s seat, butting the back to a different angle with his head rather than asking her to hold it for him. Then he checked over the controls before groping his seatbelt on and finally pressing Start. “Where are we going, by the way?” he said as the engine snorted on.

“I dunno. There’s more chatter that way and it’s not raining.” Tyreen pointed East towards the alluring thing, the  _ urge  _ she wanted somewhat more than she wanted anything else in that particular moment. Hey, it was as good an excuse as any.

“Yet. That way works.” Having pointed to her thigh and the holster for her ECHO, Troy pulled back, thought to shift the gears to Drive and rumbled off.

Before she put the music on, Tyreen reached across him and honked the horn. Troy sighed. 

The road rasped in the handful of minutes before she got to a playlist that suited her. She had dozens of them now, some curated down to pitch and BPM, others thrown together on particular turns of her mood. There’d been a lot of those at Dr. Black’s with the antibiotics wreaking havoc on her intestines and her sense of time. Playlists had made more sense than books or conversation some days, like that one time she’d ended up trying to ask Troy what she felt like inside. He’d handled most of the surgical contact with her after all, Dr. Black leaning over his shoulder and gesturing with a urethral sound, sometimes holding the clamps.

Of course Tyreen wanted to know what her peritoneum touched like. That was part of her. Maybe it belonged inside, but whatever.

Of course he answered her: “Like really wet pavement. How it gets greasy when it first starts to rain.”

So hell, if it was going to rain, she put on “Really Wet Pavement”, which was mostly old-school synth jazz tracks with heavy bass. 

Troy laughed at the saxophone trill leading the first song. Tyreen figured it wasn’t a real, brass-breathing saxophone, but the beat spun up and there they were. The whole playlist sounded like rain too, at least to her. It did pretty well with the  _ urge _ as a background.

She cracked her window open. She breathed. She closed her eyes again as the wind wrecked her hair and Troy’s too.

She’d shaved the places she’d hacked to bits during her fever and frosted the tips of the rest purple. Since she hadn’t had much hair left at that point, Troy took the leftover dye and dipped the end of his ponytail. Now it looked like a used paintbrush. 

More to the present, Troy cracked his window too, so they both got the stress of the storm, creeping flutter of the desert. The collar of the road woke and waited as hard as Tyreen did. Soon there would be food, water, living, fucking in mud puddles. The part of her that ate stretched and strained towards those notes. It wanted out surely as a gasp, but it had no place to go. 

And it turned slippery as her insides to Troy’s touch when it found him clasped in her awareness.

However old they were, she still didn’t process him as anything other than Troy. He was uncanny to her in a way not even all of the literary terminology she knew could begin to discuss. (The most Apollonian existence ever? He’d puked on her way too much for that to be true.) (And had once asked her if he was a taco because he was missing a side.) (He hadn’t even been high at the time.) (But he  _ had _ puked after.) She could have slammed words together until there were none left in the Six Galaxies and he still would have existed outside of discussion. He was to her senses so utterly aberrant that he became irresistible.

Anyway, she wanted to fuck him. 

She had since she was too young to know what fucking  _ was _ . Figuring her desires had played out: her scenting two copulating mantas, their tails corkscrewed in streaks of brassy-violet light and their open cloacae dribbling mucus as they rubbed together and purred.

Tyreen had stood there in a curtain of orange cauda vines, slobbering all over herself until they’d finished in yelps. Then, she’d eaten them both, and gone back to the homestead with her first and only nosebleed. The new information had cracked her upside the head:  _ That’s what I want out of Troy _ . Well, maybe not the cloacae and mucus parts, but the purring and the pleasure and the incomparable nearness. 

She’d reached a conclusion later that night.  _ I’m a predator. Makes sense I see him as food even though I can’t eat him. What else is my body gonna do? _ Apparently want sex. Also apparently, she’d had her first orgasm thinking about him licking spit off of her chin, though she hadn’t known what that was either, only that she needed to wash her pillow and her panties in the morning. 

More to the present state of her panties, the Really Wet Pavement playlist was doing the trick, having flowed into skittish thudding with tweaked up male vocals. Tyreen brought her boots down to the footwell and spread her knees. Yeah, that was damn nice up against the engine thunks and ditch jostles, a stoned kind of stimulation. The sense of the  _ urge _ cut just right against it and the smell of the rain.

Her skin closer the window prickled and spumed inside. She leaned to the side, trying for a better look at the clouds. They seemed fuzzy starting a mile off, maybe half. The desert that same way though looked like somebody had pulled a veil across it. She tasted the smell of it in her belly now.

“Oh, shit!” Tyreen slammed the switch for the window. Troy swore as his ponytail whipped around and hit him in the face given the sideways gust. She clambered over him again, reaching for the driver’s side switch. He swore about that too.

The storm hit right before she managed to flip it, water pelting onto her face and Troy’s arm and the steering wheel. A lock of his hair ended up in his mouth. He spit it out as he tried to shoulder her out of his lap.

Tyreen went back to her own seat on her own time, pressing her crotch to the patches again and taking in the dusty mung that was Pandora rain trickling into her bra. 

Troy finally thought to turn on the wipers. They did nothing.

The rain ran beat along, slick to the next track.

“Hey, pull over,” said Tyreen. 

Troy stared her down for a good three seconds. “Are you doing OK? You seem…”

“I want sex.”

“By the side of a road. On Pandora. When we don’t know what we’re doing next.” 

“Ugh! Yes! That’s what I want!”

“OK! OK! Can we make a decision about the  _ next  _ part and then do it to celebrate?”

“But I’m horny now!” 

“Then use your horny energy to plot us a course to glory or something!” Troy tossed his hand up. The truck walloped to the side. He seized the steering wheel and over-corrected by several feet. Wet sand splashed into their wheel wells with a disconcerting schlorp.

Tyreen groaned. She turned the music down and messed with her ECHO. “You sound like Mom!”

“…what?”

The first ad she hit blasted through the cab. She’d been prowling for music last time she accessed any broadcasts. Seemed kinda weird now, cruising the airwaves for the stuff that interrupted music. Besides that there was still music on most of the channels, clashing furiously with her own. Also, a bandit chief blathering on about meat, but they did that. Tyreen wondered if it wasn’t a Freudian thing and all bandits were actually asking to pound each other, but figuring that out sounded like work.

She finally scanned onto something somewhat useful, and shoved the ECHO Troy’s way.

This time when he looked away from the road, he made a low whistle. “Is that a brothel?”

“You’re not hooking anymore,” Tyreen reminded him.

“I was thinking maybe they need a bouncer and we could slap you in a bikini.”

“And I’m the one with too much horny.”

“Also, you’ll never shave your bush. I know. Pass.” A note of disappointment skimmed his voice.

Tyreen supposed this was mostly about him not getting dollars for his ass anymore, something he’d sometimes enjoyed. Anyway, she was not trimming her fluff. It was way too much fun to scritch through the front of her jeans or in the shower or sometimes in bed with Troy watching his semen drain out of her.

She needed to find something fast. The bassline had quit working for her with all the other noise and she was doing that thing where her cunt clenched at random because so hungry.

Oddly enough, her mouth did the same things sometimes, despite the fact Tyreen put only joy in it: sugar and booze and water and Troy’s pleasantly musty cock.

She scrolled through the next half dozen ads while fumbling her zipper. This quieted the sex rage in her vulva. It didn’t any kind of extinguish it. Oh, but it did get Troy glancing over off and on between faking like he could see where they were going. That job was too easy, that one required a tank.

She flicked onto something interesting, swirling Vittoriana tinted woodcut designs of cheerful gunmen at a bar. “Colonel Admusik’s Exceptional Exotics,” she read out loud over the actual audio.

“Sounds like a circus,” said Troy.

“Maybe it is. See the amazing Calypso Twins transform randos into dust before your very eyes.”

“…are you kidding?”

“No.” Tyreen’s laugh cut into a sneer. “Yes! Fuck. Anyway, general goon services, looks like.” She tilted the ECHO device his way so he could see for himself.

Troy thumbed his chin as he looked. “Hm. Nice branding. Pay’s not bad. I have some aggression I feel like I need to get out. You call. I’ll drive.”

“Calling,” Tyreen slammed the contact button and toed off the stereo. The line rang. “What last name did we say we were gonna use this time?”

“Erm. Pick something.”

The line rang again. 

And again.

Her suspicion that she was going to voicemail ended with a groan on the other line. A few equipment clicks preceded a slippery, world-worn, “Colonel Admusik’s Exceptional Exotics. Vincent Praedor speaking. How may I assist you? Please note that if this is a request for services, we are currently booked through next week.”

In the background: “Dammit, Vincent. This isn’t a call center!”

Tyreen grinned. Her mouth watered. They sounded tasty, especially Vincent, but  _ especially _ the voice somewhere behind Vincent. “‘sup. Heard you guys are hiring.”

“We are indeed accepting applications for…”

Also in the background: “Vincent!” and what was probably somebody kicking a trash can. 

“…we’re hiring.” 

“So I’m Tyreen Alcàntara, Alcàntara with an accent.” 

Troy’s eyes got wide like somebody had dropped their pants at him while holding a rifle and possibly an angry chicken. “Don’t pick that!” he mouthed. 

“Good for you,” said Vincent.

“Mm. I got some hardware here that could use a workout.” To demonstrate this, Tyreen cracked open the glove box, grabbed their blued Jakobs pistol and flipped the safety off next to the microphone. “And some software. That’d be Troy. Say hi, Troy.”

Troy said nothing. He continued to make the pants/rifle/chicken face.

“Umhm.” She could all but hear the guy picking his nails despite the chatter and additional trash can assault on his end. “We don’t usually take duos, but, hmm, do you know how to use that hardware?”

“Sure do.”

“Resume?”

“What? No.”

“Well we  _ don’t _ take people with resumes. That’s gauche in our line of work. Are you able to provide…”

In the background again: “Fucking seriously!”

“…Do you have a car?” concluded Vincent.

“In it right now.” Once more, Tyreen honked the horn. In fact, she honked it with the butt of the Jakobs until Troy took his hand off of the wheel to put the safety back on. “Where do you wanna meet up?”

“I’ll send you our tracking information. Call back when you’re an hour out.” 

“Alright!”

Keys clacked. Vincent grumbled about ‘whoever had spilled beer on the console’. A coordinates popup appeared in the corner of the screen. “This had better not be subterfuge for an ambush, by the way. We have a howitzer and we will use it.” Another popup appeared, this time an image of unsurprising content.

“Howitzers rule,” said Tyreen. “See ya then. Don’t get too wet.”

“We also don’t take optimists, so I hope that was sarcasm.”

Troy got at least one word in before the line went dead. “Hah!” He then rounded on his sister, eyes ablaze, teeth bared, fingers squeaking on the steering wheel as he eased them off onto the de facto shoulder of the road. ”Alcàntara!”

“And we’re married,” said Tyreen.

“Don’t just decide we’re married!”

“You’re the one left it up to me. Oh, and I need you to marry me in the back right now.” She countered his angry grimace with one of her own, only she put her tongue in her teeth and her fist in his shirt, the Jakobs now abandoned on the dashboard. 

They sat in sluicing silence for a handful of seconds.

She stroked that tongue of hers over her lips.

He swallowed.

She could smell his mouth watering.

“It’s… It’s raining a lot,” said Troy.

Tyreen thought herself quite entitled to roll her eyes at him, but then again, she had better ideas than that. She could also pull harder. She could apply her hand to his junk. She could kiss him. Mm. No. A kiss would be rewarding his behavior. 

“Don’t start with me right now,” she informed him as she took a handful of his dick through the material. Even soft, he could barely cram himself into the crotch of his jeans. Not that he stayed soft. Troy was so responsive. She could have strummed the ticklish spot on his belly and he’d have popped a boner in less than a minute. There she was though, grabbing him. He tried to swallow again as she started to stroke through the denim. The seams creaked. 

Tyreen looked him right in the face as she tugged down his zipper. Troy strained through his fly, shorts and all. She jerked him through the cartoon hearts print until she had a good wet spot going, only then yanking him out. He arced over the lap belt. He had a damn gorgeous dick, satiny and bottom-heavy with a supple, brown foreskin. This had mostly slid back on its own, but Tyreen ran her finger around the creases. Her brother’s red, wet tip beat with his breath. She grinned at him. 

Troy dribbled on her knuckles, then glanced at the mess she’d made of him. When he turned back, he was grinning too, that almost sly kinda way he only seemed to be able to do when enough blood had gone to his penis. “Whew. When you’re on, you’re really on,” he remarked, then undid his seat belt. “Count of three?” 

“Three,” said Tyreen. She bolted out of the passenger door. Hot, driven rain beat down on her. She broke for the bed entry, grappling with the wet handles for a few instants as “Dammit, Ty!” rang off of a distant bash of thunder.

By the time she jumped in, she was pretty soaked and in more ways than one. Her boots went right in her designated boot bin and the hand sanitizer came out. By the time she flung herself back on the mattress, Troy got around to joining her. 

They had a pretty good setup in the truck bed: a bunch of welded in place drawers meant for garages, boot bins, gun rack, extra springy mattress and of course color-changing LED lighting. 

Tyreen set that to aqua, signalling her victory. 

Troy jumped on top of her, water streaming from his body and his lips making a mess of hers. He put his back into it when he kissed, riding into the movements with his tongue running out of his mouth and his breath ringing in her ears after she shoved him off. “OK, that sucked,” he said once they’d swallowed enough of each other’s spit. “But I love it when you get like this. It’s so fucking hot.”

Tyreen snorted at him. “How do you think it is for me?”

“Awesome. Like how awesome actually means.”

“You are  _ such  _ a dork.”

That he countered with an ungentle nip to the hollow of her jaw.

It got her laughing and shrieking at the same time. So of course he did it again, sucking this time before he let go. She was going into this latest adventure with a blood bruise for sure.  _ Bring it _ , she thought, stretching her neck against the pillows so maybe he’d get the idea. The pressure of his bite made the corner of her vision spark and her clit surge. 

Then he licked, like he’d hurt her. That was almost more intense than his teeth, her nerves still hot and then taking his spit.

Troy managed to push her shirt up himself, but she snapped the front fastener on her bra before he could stretch it all out by shoving it up over her tits like he usually did. 

He was a big fan of ‘sucking’, which was to say nursing on her. He had that rough, limber tongue and it was pretty good actually. Today though, he swiped off his wet shirt and rubbed up against her, his skin cold enough to make her shriek again. He snickered in her face as his hand wound down between their hips, making some play at teasing her like she’d teased him earlier, squeezing her inseam into the split of her lips. Except, she made a wet click when he did it.

Troy pulled his fingers back and rubbed them underneath his nose, sniffing. Next thing out of his mouth— “Get your pants off.” He leaned back so she could try it. His own jeans hung at a weird angle, being undone but still belted. He was flushed up hard besides, a cloth crease imprinted on his dick from leaning on her. 

Tyreen gave him a swipe. “You too. Last zipper burn’s still there.” She pointed that out as she shucked herself naked. Also, she shoved her feet in his face to get her pants all the way off.

“Same,” Troy informed the blue-stained ball of her left foot. He ended up grappling with his own clothes. He was still wearing his boots, so the best he could do was shove everything down past his knees, then bend over her for another kiss. This one had lost some bite. “It’s just…” He paused, panting so hard his dick bounced. He wore an absolutely stupid wonder on his face.

Tyreen jerked her knees up. She pointed to her sloppy, wet junk. “Yes, I really want your cock in me. Come  _ on _ !”

But then he stuck her good and shuddered; then his hesitation didn’t piss Tyreen off half as much. It was hard to be pissed with her cunt full to the brim. He didn’t all fit, but she figured that problem would resolve itself eventually. For right then, she got this tight, cramping pleasure all through her pelvis. Her mouth watered and her back arched and yeah, it was pretty good, she guessed. Even if Troy’s hair dripped on her face when he started to move.

He had to go and try to lick it off. Half of what he got was her spit. She grabbed him by his ponytail and ground her mouth on his until both of them coughed in amusement.

Tyreen didn’t care if he was technically good in bed. He made her legs shake even when they weren’t trying all that hard. Her body remembered, so there was no reasoning to it, throwing herself around his waist and dragging herself off of the mattress. Her whole nervous system wanted that to happen again. Maybe there was something in her head  _ besides _ , but her thready want drove her to arch, curve her body to his. He bent over her, hanging on the best he could given he tended to count on his cock to keep them locked together and he had the fingers of his one hand scrunched in her hair.

Actually, the way that last thing smarted? Pretty hot, hotter when he tugged her to the side and bit her neck again. It got a laugh out of her that time since he was huffing about it, trying to breathe her in as hard as she hung onto him with her heels. They melted into kissing. It was hard not to, certainly not worth the effort to stop themselves. The movements came short and stuttered, each of them shoving away to gasp, shout about it.

The truck bounced. She’d been so ready when they started. Tyreen spent what felt like a solid minute screaming at him that she was coming. Hitting a plateau like that spun up maddening luscious, especially when she snapped out of it, her tension crashing in on itself and squirt sloshing into Troy’s thatch, down her belly and her hips.

Troy whistled once she was about done. She got two more good clenches in while he talked. “Whew! Well, somebody was lit. Want another?”

“You know it.”

“Alright!” Next he’d laid into her, hard and snapping his hips when he did. His slippery tip skidded her twinging nerves, coming up hard on the one really deep spot that frankly smarted, but smarted good. White hot licks of wanting and needing coursed through her on the limn of pain. Besides, she wasn’t screwed up so tight this time, wasn’t biting him with her body.

It was honestly easier for her to come on the second or third round. Once she got up high enough, had her brother the way she liked, then she would crash and she’d swim and she’d be every bit as in it as those two mantas who’d turned her onto that particular truth of her body, that all of her needed to eat and that didn’t exclude those ‘neat things in her tummy’. ...hell of a thing to cross her mind when she was getting fucked. 

Tyreen laughed at least one more time, but she laughed plenty when she came, didn’t even try to understand how people could cry about it. Let the reflex be, she figured. Let it all just  _ come _ , which she did, again— not as long or as hard but in a sated kind of way, like she might have had enough for the time being. Her body stretched, inside and out and she wound her arms around Troy’s shoulders as more squirt dribbled down her asscrack and onto the mattress. 

She also cut off any commentary he might have had. “C’mon. Your turn. Fill me up, baby.”

He didn’t argue. He was already surging and shaking inside of her. He got careless about his movements, but then again, that made for a fun ride. Not sex kind of fun, but amusing. Then the way he panted, way he moaned and still tried to kiss her: he probably didn’t realize he was so loud, hissing  _ fuck  _ and  _ I love you _ before things got incoherent and he ended up quivvering against her thighs.

Besides, he finished on a hard downstroke, deep as he could get. It made her twitch too inside, sucking on him softly. It wasn’t even kind of an orgasm, but it felt good and so did that epic squish where her body ran out of space for his sperm.

He managed to stay on his knees today, licking her lips as he finished. Then he pulled out all gently. The two of them splashed everywhere.

Tyreen loved it. Loved the mess. Loved the alkaline smell of their sweat and their fluids. Loved the bruises and bites and red marks all over their bodies. Loved the way he groaned when he let himself down onto the pillow beside her, sounding like she’d sucked him dry.

“You’re sure I can’t knock you up?” Troy ventured. 

Tyreen pressed her lips together.

He had this new bit he was doing where he asked a lot more questions about how she felt and what things were like for her. It had started after he’d accepted he was periodically going to stick one or more parts of himself between her legs until said parts got sticky. Maybe it was supposed to be sweet? Why would he need to be sweet? Not like he could leave her anyway. 

She slitted one eye at him, then stretched as hard and as spread as she could. Her vulva made a soft squelch. “Not a chance. You should see what happens to carrots when I use ‘em to masturbate.”

“Serious question: why carrots?” Troy pressed. 

“They’re hard.”

“Ah.”

“And I can feel your lil swimmers dying inside of me. It’s a nice aftertaste. They’re…” Tyreen paused and passed her reaching hunger over the sensation. How did her brother’s sperm taste in her Psyleech? “…crisp,” she decided even though crisp wasn’t a flavor.

Troy nodded right along though. “Huh. That’s cool.” 

“I like it.”

“Wait. Does this mean you can taste with your vadge?”

“Heh. Literal cuntmouth.”

“Actual cuntmouth.”

“Oh, shut up.” She was too sated to render a dopeslap and so sank into the mattress. Which was wet. Because they hadn’t been assed to put a towel down for a change.

They’d only had the thing for a month and it was already spattered with spunk and squirt and spit stains, but those marks were theirs, same as their Siren glow, and it didn’t smell that bad yet.

The rain beat down like gunfire and the windows of the cab steamed gently, catching back the glow of the LEDs. Troy curled up beside her, lacing his arm around her waist. His damp, soft cock flopped against her thigh. He still had his pants around his calves. She was still flexing inside on the afterglow and ends of that crispness inside of her.

She hadn’t given the Admusik crew an ETA. The two of them could lounge for a while and blame it on the downpour. Damn, getting railed had taken more out of her than usual. Speaking of the weather, that might have been it. It was too damn early for her to be PMS napping or late night roommate devouring. 

Ugh. It was not going to be fun hunting in the monsoon. Sure, everything and their jaws were going to be out between storms, but the air was already heavy as hell and mud was a thing and she’d get drenched at least once. Well, Troy would have to help her off with her wet clothes, now wouldn’t he? She smiled at the thought.

Troy though, he looked lost in thought, eyes only mostly open and his chin tipped towards his empty shoulder. It didn’t surprise her when he spoke. “That one thing you said.”

“I say a lot of things.”

“Earlier. You said I sounded like Mom. That was kinda weird.”

“Oh. Right, right,” Tyreen batted the mere idea out of existence. “That was from that ECHO log she left me about periods and hormones and how proud she was of her little woman. Blah blah.”

His attention went sharp beside her. “What ECHO log.”

“The one that was mine.”

“The one I’m just now finding out about.”

Was this conversation  _ actually _ about the thing where she’d eaten a bunch of bandits and not told him? Hadn’t they talked that out? “Seriously. It was a load of sap. I found it when I was like twelve and it was cringe even then.”

“Ty, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because cringe.” Tyreen stabbed a finger towards her drippy crotch. “You want a blowjob or something? Did that not do it for ya today?”

Troy gawped at her for an instant. Then, he rolled over. Having buried his face in his pillow, he also groaned, a lot. And loudly. “Why are you like this?”

Tyreen neither knew nor cared. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 12/5/2020


	3. Killing A Windmill; Not Killing Skags

“So let me get this straight.” Colonel Admusik took a gulp of her cigar. The thing was down to the dirt and smelled like a tire fire. 

Tyreen wanted a puff, but groping the thing out of the woman’s hand probably would have resulted in a different kind of puff, also screaming. Asking? Useless, with that shoulders-back casual disdain on display. Tyreen smelled it almost as hard as she did the damn cigar. 

Admusik was of a very old specialty genome, tall and limber with masculine hips and bent middle fingers. They were called Maquettes, maybe? Or was it Swords? Anyway, they were engineered for diving and posing on planets like Aquator, but there the colonel was, stalking around Pandora in jodhpurs and a pleated shirt and about a pound of gold necklaces tangled into a ruff around her neck. Presently, she rapped the ash off of her cigar using her knee guard. She said, pointing with her embers: “You’ve only got one arm. And you’re violently haphephobic.”

“Oh, I prefer the term touch averse,” said Tyreen. “I’m not afraid. I just  _ really _ hate it. Unless it’s him. He’s cool.” She tilted her head towards her brother.

Troy kept his eyes on Admusik. He did not look at his empty shoulder. He did not. Well, actually he did a little and Tyreen totally saw. 

Admusik watched this all with razor-precise attention and, “Don’t interrupt, please. I’m trying to think.”

Well, she was definitely doing something over there. Tyreen didn’t know if it qualified as thinking. The woman certainly hadn’t touched on any way she herself would have reasoned the situation out. For instance, no one had set her and her brother against anybody in a deathmatch. Wasn’t that the easiest way through the mud?

They certainly had mud, a downright obscene amount of mud. The colonel’s overhead shielding complex only blocked out about 99% of the raindrops, which in a torrential downpour meant not much. The spacing units flickered lightning hexagons against the real lightning, everybody got wet just the same and Admusik hadn’t chosen to stop anywhere decent for the night as far as footing went. Everybody was also standing in foamy dust slush. 

Admusik did continue, eventually, groaning as she did. “And you’ve never been part of a per diem contract paramilitary services organization.”

“No, we’ve never been mercs with other mercs” said Tyreen. Not as if they hadn’t tried, but trying had resulted in corpses. As in both target and collateral corpses together in a cheerful, stinking pile. “It’s just you’re here. You’re asking for warm bodies.” She placed her finger in her own mouth, sucked, and then applied the same finger to Troy, pulling his lips back from his crooked teeth. “Yep, we’re definitely alive. And bored. Boredom’s a real powerful motivator, but you know that, right.” 

Troy growled. 

“So, you wanna make this work or you wanna stand there and talk?”

Admusik chose to talk, lifting her hand towards her face so that flecks of ash drifted into her damp hair. “As a serious question, can either of you actually handle a gun?”

“You got something for us to shoot?” Tyreen asked. There were plenty of people, but given the lack of deathmatches, she’d gotten this vague impression Admusik might actually like said people. Or at least want them around for some reason. In the meantime of that question, she also placed her spitty finger on her brother’s cheek. “Oh, and he knows some kinda vintage mechanic stuff.”

The exotics of the Exceptional Exotics qualified for this. Tyreen figured every machine in the caravan had to be at least twice her age, more of them from the early age of Vault Hunting. Some of the stuff her old man would have repurposed in blinding moments of practicality even before the part where he wrecked a fancy new ship on a busted planet. Some seemed downright antique. Anyway, it was all decidedly used. Things that got used also got broken sooner or later.

Troy’s expression remained cool and staunch as Colonel Admusik lorded in his direction. She hadn’t done that at all with Tyreen, or so Tyreen noticed, but the grumpy dude who was only the same size as her only because of the heels on her own boots? Sure, apparently. Though she did refrain from puffing on her cigar while she got close, hogging all the tire fire tastiness for herself. “Is it true. Do you know stuff.”

“Y-yes,” Troy answered. He stabbed a finger towards a large, gurgling machine propped up by a tank truck. “The intake valve in your water pump’s sucking air. That’s why the kitchen water’s coming out all foamy. It’s probably a pinhole, but it’s just gonna get bigger.”

“Alright. You go with Biscuits and you fix that.”

A handful of seconds passed before Admusik waved a square-faced, blond-headed little man their way. In even the briefest of retrospects, he totally looked like a Biscuits and any idiot could have picked him out of the company based on the nickname. 

“You.”

Tyreen now. Tyreen got a cigar wave. 

“Put a bullet in that windmill.”

The windmill in question was a creaky, old Dahl turbine, just outside of the rain shielding and shaking perilously in the downpour. Tyreen sized it up like she would have somebody tasty-looking. She then yanked the blued Jakobs from Troy’s holster once he got his back to her, aimed, and fired. The Jakobs banged when it went off, but the windmill banged harder, first when one blade bent back, and then when said blade hit the post.

The twins had attracted plenty of attention since they’d screeched their breaks under the rain shield, but plenty was not all and so plenty was not Tyreen’s first choice. No, that was the whistling, cracking,  _ holy shitting _ now of everybody as the windmill bowed and fell over.

“That’ll do,” said Colonel Admusik. She showed no awe, no objection to such obvious showboating and certainly no anger. She gestured for Tyreen to follow her.

Oh. Right. Following had to be part of this little distraction. Well, fine. She could be some kind of satisfied with this arrangement for a while and operating on the assumption dinner wasn’t that far away.

Tyreen walked after the colonel, who only kept maybe half an eye on  _ her _ , somebody still holding a loaded Jakobs and a dozen unanswered questions. 

Tyreen’s own: what even was the endgame of Colonel Admusik’s Exceptional Exotics? What with the repurposed equipment and the fact they apparently stopped for rest and meals rather than chugging energy drinks and stims while screaming at each other over ECHONet? They weren’t a hunting party— no trophies, wrong vibe. The repurposed vans and trucks must have made too much noise for them to stealth anything resembling a job. There might be some stuff belonging to customers on the cargo rigs, but they employed too many people for a shipping company.

Maybe they had no goal. Maybe this was more of a lifestyle organization that took cursory jobs because cursory jobs meant food and boots and porn. Tyreen could handle that even if it was low-aspiration for her taste. It’d keep Troy busy for a while. They might meet somebody worth knowing.

Tyreen had only had that happen twice and found it unfulfilling. Just— hmm, nice, yes, here’s somebody who knows how to sew up guts. One knew car guts and the other knew her guts. She had blackmail material on the second one and could keep her around to sew up more guts in the future. Her name was possibly Dr. Black and easy to remember. 

All the weeks she and her brother had camped out with that woman? It didn’t come close to that catty air kiss of the company watching her shoot.

OK, so she didn’t social like a normal person either. The whole situation begged a question, there on the whine of Admusik opening the door to her office trailer.

What was  _ Tyreen’s  _ endgame besides more? More attention, more food, more sex, more joy.  _ More _ , basically. This was  _ more _ . Kinda. There could always be  _ more  _ more. That was the thing about wanting  _ more _ .

“So,” Colonel Admusik said with authority; the sort of authority one might expect to come from someone who was paying for the fuel to lug around an antique chippendale desk, several cactuses and a romanesque bust with a neon visor.

Basically, the perfect kind of authority to interrupt in the midst of showing off, which also happened. 

A tall, dark-haired gentleman with a moustache and cigarette holder dangling off of his face came charging in through the door, dodging out of Tyreen’s way with aplomb even though he had almost whacked her one with the door. As soon as he opened his mouth, Tyreen recognized him as Vincent. “Sir! Sir! The ECHOnet’s down,” he panted. He did not sound as though he believed himself.

Admusik crouched to make eye contact with him where he’d wiped out on her rugs amidst the dust of other cigars. “What do you mean the ECHOnet’s down? It’s a communication  _ network _ . Networks don’t just cease to exist. This isn’t some horror comic from Ranjatai 7.”

“It’s down. It’s gone. There’s nothing coming in.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I can’t even access our database hub when I’m standing next to it. Something is wrong, sir.”

With a groan, the colonel pulled out her ECHO and tested this. “I know you don’t like short ribs, but…”

Several suspect beeps followed.

In the interest of playing along, Tyreen also attempted to access several of the servers nearby. Nearby though they were, they gave her nothing, not even reliable pings. It was as though all matter had become Faraday cages. Also, the rain picked up as the three of them were congenially whacking their equipment on their pant legs as though this was going to change anything. 

It did not. The camp meanwhile avoided devolving into a hollering mess. Tyreen, rather than attempt to look disconcerted, peered out the window to see— people taking out notebooks and rolling out marker boards, and, in one case, a woman writing on one of her companion’s heads.

Vincent said  _ fuckbuckets  _ and left to place himself in the analogue fray. As for Colonel Admusik, she joined Tyreen at the window.

And Tyreen noticed there was no outward resistance when it came to the whole not touching her thing. The woman didn’t even put her hands behind her back, even though she was at a pretty good angle to have rested a palm on Tyreen’s shoulder and there should have been some temptation. “Well, now the only way I’m taking you is if one of you knows how to use a sextant.”

“Damn, I guess.” Tyreen snapped her fingers, then pointed to herself. “That’d be me. I prefer to be paid in cash.” 

“I was messing with… How do you… OK, fine.” The colonel’s laugh came hearty, but fake. She finally stabbed out her cigar, leaving the butt smouldering on a bathtub of an ashtray. “You’re hired. Contingency basis. No profit sharing until you prove you don’t shit up jobs.”

Well, this was, if nothing else, an amusing development. Tyreen decided she’d made a good decision, yelling at Vincent about guns earlier. At least this crew was some shade of interesting and they apparently had stuff to feed Troy besides MREs. Troy had gotten bitchy about MREs since Dr. Black had made him real scrambled eggs. “Fine with us. That comes with food, right?”

“That comes with two meals a day and black seal rum because this is a gentleperson’s operation.”

Thank fuck. "Sounds real twenty-second century pirate novel. I like it,” Tyreen said, stepping away from the window in favor of a likely-looking place before the desk.

Colonel Admusik made her own way over on her own time, whereupon she raided a filing cabinet for a pair of contract folders. Paper ones. With gold leaf monograms. “Now, I was messing with you. I’m not sending anybody out with this planet clearly being more on fire than usual. But you’d better not have lied to me about the sextant, because, Mrs. Alcàntara, I am the one who holds the sextant here and I am the one who does the messing with.” Self-satisfaction dripped from her, easy as rain from her trailer roof in the storm.

“Of course I know how to use a sextant. What do you think I was, raised in a cave?” said Tyreen.

“I never know around here. Say, if I ask you what your favorite book is, will it be one you read or or one you ate?”

“Read.  _ Cat’s Cradle _ by Kurt Vonnegut.”

“Never heard of it. I don’t like new books though.”

“Huh. You?”

“ _ Når Vi Døde Vaagner. _ ”

Tyreen nodded. She kept her distaste for books from cold places to herself— too much gloom even in the porn and overly geometric socks. “Interesting,” she said with some sincerity, adding, “I thought the interview was over?”

“And now the camaraderie must be nurtured. I don’t care if you stay a week or a year or for the rest of your lives. There’s no point in having you here if you aren’t  _ here _ .” More self-confidence ensued, but it came at the same moment the colonel laid hold of her ECHO. “Vincent, would you… Damn. How complicit I have become in my own idiocy.” She gave the thing a toss and laid it aside, out of her own reach.

_ I am more present than you can possibly imagine _ , thought Tyreen. She also of course thought that the font choice on the contracts was extra as hell and that it was strange how she hadn’t felt anything shifting around her when the ECHOnet first did whatever it was doing. Or not doing rather. As she read, she let her senses spread. The  _ urge _ came clearly through the flush of warm bodies in the camp, drawing lightly on her knees, suggesting that she move. Tyreen did not move, not more than it took her to turn back to the window. “Oh. Skags,” she said, gesturing to the edge of camp. Actually, it was three big, horny ones no less. A nice dinner.

Admusik though waved her hand. “I wouldn’t bother. We have repellers.” 

But Tyreen was hungry.

“Besides, you’re not getting out of paperwork and neither is your husband.”

They both adjusted themselves to the door as Troy came slamming through it. “Pump’s fixed!” he said.

“You’re not even wet,” the colonel pointed out. “How’d you do that?”

“Sir, begging your pardon, but I use my mouth as an extra hand all the time and I’m used to  _ not _ getting wet. Doesn’t matter if it’s drool or rain.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. That does sound useful.”

The twins nodded and they stood and they read. The contracts were mostly about food, an excessive amount of that portion being devoted to beef jerky rations and appropriate behavior when using beef jerky rations. This only interested Tyreen insofar as the apparent drama behind such a long section, that combined with her own lingering desire to leech things which were still alive, say, not beef jerky.

She could still sense them out there, the skags, dancing and fighting and shitting in the rain.

Anyway, she signed the name that wasn’t hers with the accent mark and that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 12/5/2020


	4. Troy Puts Meat Up His Nose; Catter Occurs

Troy sat under a smokey overhang by the kitchen trailer. Three other people had planted their asses there first, all bumming cigarettes off of each other and sneezing a lot: Biscuits (his biscuitiness accented by lop-mouthed smoking stance), Vincent (tall, dark, handsome and gesturing ashes all over with his silver cigarette holder) and somebody who went by Lotty (more of a human pony bead and spray tan accident).

There was beef jerky, albeit not enough of it to justify more than a page of the Exceptional Exotics’ employment contracts. 

Lotty was saying, holding a tin stickered with a jolly cowboy up to Troy, “Now, the correct way to eat beef snuff…”

“Also known as _machaca_ , if you’re feeling fancy,” Vincent interrupted. 

Troy nodded. 

This pattern repeated: “Is to, well, snuff it. You put a little on your finger.”

“The middle, if you’re feeling fancy.”

Troy’s nod came on the tentative side that time as he pondered whether he felt fancy or not. 

Biscuits leaned in, pressing an encouraging hand to Troy’s back, Troy being too lost in thought to protest more than leaning an inch to the side. “It’s not like doing cocaine at all. You really have to really suck it in…” A wet snort accompanied this assertion. “…from deeeeep in your chest.”

“The trick’s in where you put the back of your tongue.” Lotty said, their voice tilting towards some sort of conclusion.

This being stolen from them by Vincent, “But oh, the joy of meat sinuses.”

“You would say that.”

“You know you love me.”

“I love you like the parched earth loves spilled beer.”

“So, not at all today. Boo.”

It was at this point Tyreen stamped across the puddles pissing down through the leaky rain shield. “Troy!”

Troy meanwhile swept his middle finger through the jerky and right up to his nostrils. He pressed his thumb to the left side. The shredded meat disappeared. 

Troy doubled over, sneeze-coughing goopy, brown snot. “I can taste that in my ears,” he wheezed.

“Really?” remarked Lotty. “That’s a new one. Are you sure, ‘cause I mean, if you _really_ wanna taste with your ears…” This sentiment unfinished, they lifted both of their hands, beckoning to Vincent and Biscuits. The two men had already grumblingly taken out actual paper cash to settle their bets, what with the ECHONet still being toast.

Tyreen shooed off Biscuits and beat Troy about the back until he was kind of breathing again. 

“If you’re going to squeal to the boss,” Vincent said, sucking on his cigarette, “get us some more jerky while you’re in there? I don’t want what he sneezed on.”

“On no planet was that a sneeze. You don’t get it, man!” Troy protested.

“That’s a lie. Lotty got _him_ twice,” said Biscuits.

Well, that had to be embarrassing for somebody.

Unlike her brother, Tyreen did not stop to ponder and definitely not anything about snorting beef jerky. “He brought this on himself. That’s plenty for me. C’mon. They opened the beer taps.” One more thwack and she grabbed Troy by his jacket and hauling.

He pinwheeled half a step in front of her. “I don’t even like beer and neither do you,” he muttered, then discharged more snot into his hand.

Besides, there was a line for said beer. Someone had written on the tarp overhanging the taps: _Welcome!_ No names though, just like nobody announced that food was served. 

At a certain point, Colonel Admusik stepped out of her trailer and made her way to a kitchen trailer window where a plate of something greasy, steaming and flickering with oversized bones appeared. She took her pick of seats at one of the rickety picnic tables, tucked a cloth napkin into her collar and sat down. Two of the face-tattooed howitzer operators dived to offer her their beers before fighting their way back into line.

Tyreen wouldn’t have said she’d wanted announced, but the company seemed like a place that announced people. Besides, an excuse to shoot something else would have wrung more laughter out of this crowd, maybe gotten her offered a beer. Not that she could have drunk said beer. Not enough alcohol to actual food ratio. Anyway, she got the angle now. There were two ranks here: the colonel and all the other mercs.

So, apparently she and Troy were other mercs now. Tyreen had not been aware that mercs served short ribs for food. She was also unclear on exactly what a ‘short rib’ might entail. Which ribs counted as short? Why not eat the long ribs first since they must contain more delicious meat? Was it absolutely necessary to stop an entire company of mercs in the middle of a downpour to set up a kitchen trailer and make a welcome dinner which was now doomed to get damp while the people who ate it?

Tyreen, already plenty damp and not in the fun way, swung up to the kitchen window ahead of Troy. “I heard something about rum rations.”

“Rum and short ribs?” The cookie gave her a squint, but shrugged and ponied up a quarter split with an orange slice and some soda machine ice. “How many?”

“Ah, yeah, pass on that. I don’t do bones.” Casting her hand up briefly, she removed herself before facing any of an argument. This dinner was going to suck hard enough without a plate of dead thing under her nose, teasing her with its infernal pre-deadedness. Tyreen’s belly had already started to do the gurgling, twisty thing where the part of her that ate gathered there and tried to peek out of her navel. At least she had rum and the _urge_ to distract her until nightfall and the Skågåsbord that would bring. They were still out there. She could sense them flickering about the hills.

Then of course her brother had to go and acquire an overflowing plate of bones, his mashed potatoes relegated to a mug which he carried balanced on his elbow. 

Tyreen got to the table first, cracking open her rum and slugging it right out of the bottle. Sweet stuff, super dark. Probably wouldn’t make her retch. Her orange slice went on her brother’s potatoes once he’d gotten everything onto the table without incident. He shrugged and ate it anyway, greasy garlic butter and skin and all, smiling at her with the rind pressed over his teeth.

Tyreen glowered at him. She then slid back to her drink, twisting it over and over as he chewed and more people got food and the shields leaked. 

Idly, she wondered what anybody would do if she gnawed on a bone. Not that she was going to. Bones made a fine justification for not eating this thing or that other thing, so no way she would. She had that urge of her own though, sometimes after sunset and skimming on her tongue.

Meanwhile, she had to notice that Colonel Admusik only carried picnic tables that seated three to a side. The far one of their table? Still empty when Hypothetical Third Person planted her ass beside Troy. She made a chirp when she did, as though she had a squeaker in her ass. 

Tyreen peered around Troy.

And the person waved, fork on her lips. She was smallish, fairish, made-up-ish, wearing a Dahl army coat three sizes too big for her. Peroxide blonde hair dragged in her eyes, themselves the color of moss. 

Troy managed to pull himself away from his plate long enough to tilt his head her way and jostle his occupied shoulder at her. Like— hello, I am eating, other person who had at least ten other places to sit.

Said other person craned over her own plate and she stared out at him through his magazine cover kind of smile. Finally, she gestured with one gloved hand, flicking her finger close enough to Troy’s left eye that she got a jolt out of him. “So, who does your work?” she asked, words somersaulting over each other. 

Troy’s fork froze in mid-air. “This? Oh, umm a few people.” Rather than look her quite in the face, or stop eating, he wiggled his hand and dripped gravy. “They didn’t come out so great the first time.”

“It wasn’t Miss Moju on Rigil 7, was it? ‘cause she’s getting hella sued and if you want in on that, I got the contact stuff for the lawyer on my ECHO.”

“Oh. No, not her. I didn’t even think about her.” Troy ended that on half a snort.

One Tyreen could have joined him for.

Except this person acted like she thought he’d laughed. She tittered back.

And she totally cut Tyreen off, but that was another story. With titters.

“Really? You must be pretty hardcore.” She held her hand out, slower than she’d talked. Tyreen could hear her boots swishing under the table. “I didn’t think about her either. I’m Catter. Colonel said you were Troy?”

Troy nodded. He dipped his fork into his potatoes, leaving it there. He had to twist his whole self sideways to offer her his wrong hand, but his joints were hyperflexible garbage and he only had the one hand to offer anybody, so he managed OK, tilted his head up too, not that he made eye-contact. “Yes. It’s nice to meet you. This is…”

Catter’s head, then her shoulders, tipped to the side. She looked like she was trying to shed some part of herself, and in fact she kind of did. The sleeve of her too-big coat rode up about an inch on her left wrist.

Glinting geometric swirls poked out.

”Oopsie,” she said, holding her other hand almost to her mouth.

Tyreen made a face. To cover that, she also stuck her rum in said face. Smacking off of her bottle, she added, “You did that on purpose. Just say you’re a fangirl next time, shit.” Anyway, she’d heard whispers in the alleys of the ECHONet, about how “pirate AU fanfiction isn’t valid, you weirdos” and also “my sister’s a Siren fangirl for cosplays and it’s kind of fucked up”.

Well, Tyreen knew what fangirl and cosplay meant in the same way she knew what short ribs meant. The terms raised more questions than answers. But there was Catter. Quod erat demonstrandum. Also, no way this person was a Siren. She smelled like some kind of plant and not primeval space magic at all. 

“I thought we were having fun,” said Catter, finally breaking the shake with Troy and pressing a finger to her infernally perfect dimple. “Is she always so grumpy?”

Troy’s back tensed as he answered, despite the evenness of his tone. “Are you always so effervescent?”

One of those words earned him a confused blink, and another titter. “ I… What? Hee! I should have known you were different. A guy with Siren ink. That’s just so… I’m sorry. I’ve never actually seen one! Or a Siren. But I’m gonna fix that.” Catter turned a look of determination, first to the sky, and then to Troy.

“Ah, and now you have.”

“So! So! I drew mine myself and I got a whole set, see?” Her coat went onto the table. Two other mercs steered away, off to less occupied shores. Underneath, she wore a sleeveless collar top and no bra. Tyreen wasn’t wearing a bra either, so whatever on that, but the loopy tattoo business liberally slathered onto Catter’s person proved to be the single most gruesome shade of magenta that Tyreen had ever seen. 

“And I see you like pink,” Troy offered, congenially.

Catter drew closer once more. She still did not touch, but her eyes traced over Troy’s own markings with a precision. “Did you draw yours too? I know some places that’s a thing, but some other places you let your artist do it for you.”

“I drew them,” said Tyreen.

A sound of distress followed. “You didn’t give him a whole set?”

“Like you said. He’s a guy. Maybe he doesn’t get a whole set. Maybe he has to _earn_ them.”

“Wow, you two have like _lore_ worked out? Are you on SirenSona.net?”

“We like to keep it to ourselves. It’s, umm our stuff,” Troy said, attempting to turn away, hand in his hair this time.

“Oh, am I intruding? I’m sorry it’s just I love your eye mark and she…” Catter’s hand once more intruded, but this time she at least had the sense to apply to to her fork after she thought better. It was with her off-hand that she gestured between her table mates. “Actually, what are you two?”

Tyreen snorted.

And Troy said: “Oh, we’re cousins.” His grin flashed even in the corner of his silhouette. 

So no wonder Tyreen had to fish him the rest of the way out of the proverbial ditch. “And we’re married.” 

“What?” Catter’s eyes were now the size of SAT-V hubcaps. “Really? That’s wild.” 

“Cousins are made for cousins, that’s what they said back at the old commune,” Troy laughed. Wow, he almost sounded convincing. 

To Catter, anyway. “So you like grew up together?”

“Yeah.”

“And now you _do_ _it_?”

“Yes, Catter,” snerked Tyreen. “That’s part of being married. Do you wanna come mop up our bed tonight when we get done doing it?” She layered on the sincerity, as if plying for her personal dinner. This had gotten old about five absurdities ago.

“Nooo.” As for how much no, Catter pressed one (still-gloved) finger to her lips. “But anytime you wanna fanperson, we can do that. Like you’re part of the team now and I want you to feel welcome and I’ve got that limited edition gravure with the Lilith buttshot. The one where. You know. You can see.”

Tyreen and her brother both nodded. Tyreen and her brother had no idea what could be seen in this image besides the obvious. Oh, and that its mention somehow entailed that Catter stayed. And stayed. She stayed right, through dinner and seconds and dessert which was mostly more rum and left Tyreen’s already overactive stomach roiling with desire. 

Catter talked about Miss Moju (a hack) and about Torgue guns (the twins had no experience). She talked about volcano sauce, which sounded painful and left Tyreen begging off that she didn’t like spicy food. This was apparently a tragedy. How the woman’s face fell. Even her hair seemed to melt in the moment. Then she sat on her hands so she didn’t reach out, such an obvious tell and one which they’d otherwise been spared.

At the end of the experience, Tyreen still wouldn’t have said that she wanted to eat Catter any more than she wanted to eat anyone or anything else in the world. Troy sort of counted and what if the _urge_ was food and what if she caught Vincent taking a piss behind that trailer there? She could sure pocket his cigarette holder. She could be full for thirty seconds of him silently screaming against her nerves.

But _damn_ , everything Catter did made her look tastier by the gurgling, wet minutes she remained, and remained and then bounced off just as quickly as she had arrived. She didn’t squeak this time though. Rather, she made this keening noise perhaps approaching delight. Then she splashed away, coat dragging, towards the people she hadn’t spent all dinner bothering.

Tyreen pulled Troy’s head down. 

He chewed in her ear, trying to finish his oranges in rose water. 

“I seriously just told that idiot to clean up my squirt and she’s just like go on, fam. Who wants porn. Of Sirens. Because that’s something I’m clearly lacking in my life!”

“Can you not be a crass jerk for like five minutes?” Troy groaned. He was still snot gurgling somewhere behind his palate.

“Sure. Interactions with that one don’t count.”

“Ugh.”

“And hey, maybe we should scope out the competition.”

“What is she competition for?”

“No, I meant the Lilith pic. Never seen more than a wanted poster. What if she’s got blue sparkles around her anus or something?”

Troy glared. “So appetizing.”

“What? I mean, an ass is an ass! And I  _ don’t _ have blue sparkles around my anus. I totally got screwed if she does and I don’t.” Not that Tyreen had wanted her asshole to glitter before that moment, or that she ever did again. It was the principle of the thing. 

“Your anus is fine the way it is.” Her brother said, placid and soothing. 

“Umm, aww, I guess.” Having given him a pat on his orange-sticky cheek, she called over her shoulder. “Hey, Catter!”

Catter’s face gleamed in the humid evening light. “Yes?”

“Maybe keep that gravure handy?” The last she enunciated with her tongue out and a wink.

This did not elicit a response she expected. From anyone. Ever. “Whippty-pow!”

Tyreen construed this as yay. To do otherwise might have had negative implications for her sanity.


	5. Aside: Her Silence; A Mirror

Unbeknownst to Tyreen, Troy was having a crisis. Not that Troy particularly cared if she was cognizant of his situation. It was definitely his twelfth crisis of the past two months after eleven of them had been about her in the first place. 

Troy was about done with the constant SNAFUs. This wasn’t a question of averages anymore. This was days where everything exploded, punctuated with silence and cuddles and light bondage. It exhausted him.

It was also exactly what he got for leaving Nekrotafeyo. 

Except, oh wait, he hadn’t gone willingly. Not at all and not that he particularly enjoyed still having that you-coming-or-not memory stuck between his ears. Sure, things had, all disasters aside, worked out for the best. He didn’t regret being on Pandora with a sister who seemed to be developing a thing for pretending they were married. That was a hot kink to have if he did say so himself, the desert backdrop nothing to do with it. 

But it was the same damn thing over and over with Tyreen, always that  _ one snibble _ of information she neglected to tell him.

They were leaving and they  _ weren’t _ taking Typhon. Reason: unbearable I-Need-To-Be-On-Pandora-Yesterday suffering on her part and Typhon was actually kind of an ass. (Troy nudged at a water-rotted succ at the edge of camp with his boot.) (He did not like recognizing that Dad was an ass either.)

Oh, she knew some additional details on how their mother had died that made things both a lot better and way worse. (Troy turned away from the puddle of succ juice he’d made. It was too apropos.)

She actually found Leda’s splint rings and she hadn’t told him until he’d moaned about them in a fit of pain-related delirium? OK, actually the timing on that was pretty cool once he’d gotten over the shock. (Troy for the moment headed somewhat back to the headlight flow of the Exceptional Exotics, fiddling with the ring he wore on his pinkie on achy, read: rainy, days.)

Now this thing with the mysterious ECHO recording all slammed up with this Siren fangirl Catter and her unwitting determination to drain the fun out of the joke/kink about them being married.

Why hadn’t Tyreen told him along with the rings or the other skin-crawling stuff while they were busily screaming at each other about everything they couldn’t fix? Or when she’d found it. She’d had it for  _ a while _ , not having been twelve for some years now.

Troy could get over that. He could get over the fact the actual recording was probably gone in the dust of their last car wreck. He kind of had to get over a lot if he wanted to stay alive and such. 

But this Catter situation. This was already out of hand. 

Now, it should be mentioned that at this point in the story, Troy had not accepted that he was a Siren. He hadn’t even kind of reached the level of personal growth and ecstatic sex this would eventually require of him. He possessed a curious belief that he was, at best, the byproduct of a Siren as Slag would be to Eridium in a few short years, though that hadn’t happened yet either.

Not being a Siren made him feel insecure. Then again, the faint possibility that he might be one? That was fucking terrifying. 

Having someone as open, as loud, as perfumed as Catter involved in the discussion made him want to clench his jaw until his snaggletooth snapped out. He also had a hell of a snaggletooth, poking out of the upper left of his jaw with kittenish cuteness.

Troy (and maybe his snaggletooth, though it was quiet on the subject) would have rather shot a stranger in cold blood than believed he was a Siren, but that was somewhat Dad talking.  _ Slugabed. Broken-ass. The boy. _ As if there’d been any other boys running around the ruins and cheerfully breaking priceless ancient artifacts to make their sister laugh.

After everything: why hadn’t Tyreen stood up for him?

Well, he was an adult. Not exactly her job. But she had to know Siren enthusiasm bothered him. Didn’t she? At least after the way some of the people he’d hooked up with on this wonderful, miserable planet had talked to him about Sirens and markings and the whole missing arm thing.

By that point in his sloshing ruminations, Troy had nearly made it back to the heart of camp. He hadn’t been paying the slightest attention to how and what heart of camp, so when he came back to himself, it was to the realization that his face was full of lights and also he was standing beside somebody else’s funback pickup truck wherein very loud fucking was currently happening.

His head swam. He tried not to smirk. For an instant, he prepared to curse himself over not stealing some migraine meds from Dr. Black on his way out, except, well, she wasn’t a stranger and he probably wouldn’t have shot her unless Tyreen somehow couldn’t have eaten whatever was threatening them in this hypothetical thirteenth crisis. 

Briefly, he saw himself, as though in a mirror. The other him had Tyreen under his arm and a big, fat spliff in his mouth. 

“Fuck,” said Troy to himself. If he could stop wringing his brain about this. Tyreen was what she was. Nothing would change.

Well, maybe he could get himself a joint, he realized as the image of himself faded away. In fact, that smelled like some nice, oily dank somewhere underneath the storm wind and the last whiff of the short ribs.

Meanwhile, he’d ended up about face-to-face with Vincent. As close as he ever came face-to-face with anyone, anyway. Troy turned away, running his hand through his bangs as though they’d gotten wet. 

“Hm,” said Vincent, “I want to know what’s eating you? It sure isn’t me.”

“I’m mentally tuning up the big truck.”

“Oh, right. Mechanic stuff. Not my bag. You’re not gonna put greasy spark plugs in your mouth like you did the tape for the pump line, are you?”

“I might. See, I just found out my sister accidentally sucked the life out of our little brother’s fetus after our mom attempted suicide and you know how that goes. I think maybe that’s why she does so much weird shit, but it’s a rich tapestry. Don’t even get me started on our dad.”

Vincent nodded. He picked at his ear. “I am  _ not _ used to your commune slang.”

Ugh! They’d only mentioned the commune to Catter and it had already gotten around. News travelled too damn fast with this bunch and Catter demonstrated herself a super-lightspeed conduit.

Huh. Actually. He might be able to use that.

Might.

More to the meanwhile: “You guys said something about making me taste with my ears.”

Vincent took a puff of his cigarette, then gestured with the ashes. “Troy? That’s included with the rations. You didn’t really think we were that into beef jerky?”

“I put nothing past people wandering the desert and eating dead cow.”

“Huh. That’s too smart. Maybe stick that one in your pants for later.” 

The next two things Troy especially remembered were demonstrating how to roll a joint one-handed, and Tyreen telling him to do it harder, though if that last part was about shotgunning her the remains of said joint or anything he was currently doing to her asshole, he couldn’t have said. 

The afterimage of himself sure gave him a thumbs up about whatever it was though.

And that. That was some good shit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's one way to summarize the previous novel. I guess.
> 
> Thanks, fam. I got a surprise coming up for the holidays, so keep your eyes on the horizon.
> 
> Erm, the surprise may or may not include more of this, the world being on fire and all.
> 
> Next Time: can Tyreen actually function as part of a group? The answer may surprise you!


	6. Sirens; Psychos; The Usual

Tyreen could mostly walk the next morning. It was sitting that turned out to be a challenge. Solution: avoid sitting and look proactive in the process.

Admusik had decided they were moving out before dawn. A certain portion of the Exceptional Exotics went about this not only in underwear, but in fancy Vittoriana-style underwear and while singing.

Tyreen didn’t want to know, but managed pants for the occasion. She pretended to drink some coffee, only to surreptitiously spit it out into her brother’s mug, so he was pretty juiced by the time they got around to packing up the rain shields.

She also gave herself a hell of a buzz on a malfunctioning unit which she then passed off to Troy since that was his job to fix now and also she had to share joke joy with her brother. Twin rules. That was still a thing, even considering the ass-related events of the night before. He yelped way too much and kissed her, his mouth still sour with whatever all he’d smoked, besides the coffee.

He felt sour too, if that was a thing. Probably the rain messing with his janky joints and her picking up on it. He couldn’t still be off about the ECHO log, not after that slow and dirty stoner screw. So she thought exactly nothing of informing him, “Yeah, I’m gonna hitch a ride on the big truck ‘cause I guess it’s got standing room and I’m having these mysterious butthole cramps.”

Troy gave her a look, a considering look. Considering what, well, this was Troy, the anathema thing she boned, and he said, “Ooh, the big, scary MacGuffin? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure it takes one to know one.”

“Umm, ouch.”

“C’mon. I’ll roll up after dark with a sloppy cunt and you can pick the music in the meantime.”

“I guess,” he sighed, feigning dejection. He then held out his hand.

Tyreen dragged him to one of the lavatories and poured the happy, horny skag life into him. They shared another kiss, then exited the cubicle to a handful of sniggering howitzer team, something Tyreen already understood didn’t qualify as remarkable. Troy meanwhile snugged her against his armpit before ambling back to their truck, leaving her to break for the one big one as fast as she could with a sore ass.

At the back she held up her Maliwan sub-machine gun and nodded to the crew members busily gossiping outside. One of them took off like a shot and another, without breaking conversation, showed her inside of the bed.

The bed had a paneled wood floor, one in near flawless condition.

It was also empty. No cargo, no lights, no other people, not even a dust bunny. A few gunner loops and grab handles lined each side and there was a mop suspended in one corner. It smelled unusually neutral to Tyreen’s Siren senses, as if it had once possessed a smell of its own, but this had been sprayed and scrubbed away.

She took off her boots, hung them up beside the mop, and claimed the front left gunner loop. By and by, a few more Exceptional Exotics, dressed this time, filtered in. Most of them also took their shoes off and none of them complained about the spot that was now hers, though one did run the mop around the floor before taking their own. The engine sputtered to life soon after.

Heady air buffeted through the loop. If the trailer itself had no smell, that fact sure made the smell out there better, all the grimy, juicy Pandora passing by and the horizon once more full of  _ urge _ .

They were driving straight towards the thing, and for that reason, Tyreen let the oddness of the empty truck bed slip towards the back of her mind.

This damn planet had given her some major hodophilia. Too much of a journey was not enough. She wanted to eat it all, even the dust, and whether or not she’d made said dust herself. She wanted to be there, rolling around in the sweet filth until the filth became, inextricably, part of her. 

She’d wanted that for a long time, much longer than she’d been on Pandora. It had started before she could remember it starting, somewhat unlike her rapid onset inability to eat food. 

At first it came through simple.  _ Pandora stories are my favorite. I want to hear them most of all. _ Mama and Dad had told a hell of a lot of Pandora stories considering their audience consisted of each other and two children who were never, ever, ever,  _ ever _ supposed to go to Pandora. Only especially Dad. 

He’d stopped after Tyreen ate her last plum. She’d been four and full of the things. She knew something was changing, a season in her body that brought her perception into this bright clarity. This ended with her violently purging her digestive tract all over Dad. She hadn’t kept any food in herself since. Dad insisted no more Pandora stories. They were ‘about the thing hurting Starlight’. Bah! Tyreen felt fine once she was done with her plum shits. A little hungry, but fine. No big deal.

She still wanted to hear about Pandora. She wanted that like she’d wanted food once. It took her a few tries to explain as much to Mama— it was hard at first, talking to people who couldn’t see, couldn’t smell, couldn’t know like she did —but Mama got her point. She took over the Pandora stories just fine, whispering to Tyreen and Troy while they bathed, telling Tyreen: “I know it’s part of you. Sometimes, your father doesn’t understand girl things.” then booping her on the nose and going back to something or other about eviscerated Flynts. Flynts were like Titans, but shootier.

(Wait, did this scenario imply that Mama thought Troy had ‘girl things’ too? Stuck back on the topic, Tyreen briefly wondered what an ECHO recording for him would have sounded like. The thought made her burp.)

That was how Mama became her favorite person. 

Then Mom decided to die and take their little brother out with her. That left Troy for the new favorite person. They played Pandora when they went out hunting together. They whispered about Pandora in the dark even after they split their bed and partitioned off rooms in the Vault. In fact, they had this game where they talked about both marrying a pretty, blonde girl  _ on _ Pandora, but the last time they’d played  _ that _ was about the time things started to get stringy for Tyreen in the Pandora department.

Words weren’t enough anymore and neither was the furious masturbation sans any other girls, pretty, blonde or otherwise. 

Tyreen stayed out and she didn’t bother daydreaming since the daydreams made her skin crawl with a longing for hot sand that wasn’t there. She hunted and she sucked the life out of whole valleys and she humped whatever caught her fancy, usually bones, since puns. She did these things until she exhausted herself. Sometimes, she napped in ditches and she saw a moon that was also a sun behind her closed eyes. She woke up with water from sunshowers she didn’t remember still clinging to her face.

Now and then she went back to the Vault to make sure her brother didn’t die, since if he died there’d be nobody to talk to on the off chance she wanted to talk. 

Dad, bah again. What about Dad? He got extra shitty with Troy and drank the still dry. It sucked. 

Meanwhile, Tyreen yearned. That sucked even harder, maybe because she was herself Tyreen and trapped in that point of view. Also, yearning felt like cramps somewhere in her midbrain. 

Yearning was supposed to be ethereal and melancholic — a window’s walk, a moment of reflection, a damp hankie. Tyreen’s came out bloody and restless, also like cramps. The stars started to piss her off when she looked at them. She remembered wanting to walk across them if that’s what it took to free her from her juvenile cage metaphor. There was really nothing metaphorical at all about being stuck in a wet puddle of bone ash on a world that was trying to tear itself apart.

Tyreen became so snappy and unsociable that Troy apparently got to the point where he found her behavior endearing. That, or he went stir crazy. It wasn’t like she  _ invited _ him along hunting like they’d used to do, but there they were one afternoon or another, grownups playing Pandora again in the rainy season mud. She’d scream and she’d seethe and they’d stay out to watch the rings of planet rubble twist towards the night spasms in the aurora.

He never told her to get off it. Never ordered her to come down. He stayed by the campfire while she broke things and bled. The space between them resembled ‘fine’ by certain twists of the light.

She could have held onto that for another couple years before she did anything stupid to herself or him, but luck and no small amount of violence brought them a jump drive. Or rather, a Maliwan research crew who could be relieved of their jump drive. 

Their hope ran thin and prickly. Tyreen hated hoping just as much as she hated yearning or the kink she’d get in her neck staring up at the place in the glowing void of the universe where she knew Pandora festered. 

That last night, she  _ maybe _ rushed Troy into leaving, but he got over it. 

It took a while, but he did. Now, here they were. 

Tyreen breathed. Pandora was like nothing she’d known before Pandora. Frankly, it still made her slobber and creep with joy inside. The  _ urge _ was just one delicious fragment of why. She didn’t hope for anything in particular of it. She wanted to know it. Maybe eat it, if it was food. Also, getting shot more than proved how much she still loathed the whole hope thing.

She hadn’t even really hoped Troy would move on from the whole part where she conned him onto the ship. It would have been nice if he’d improved health-wise more than he had, but maybe that was a Secret Garden kind of thing and Vittoreans were weird.

Privately, she smiled, imagining resting her head on his boney chest one siesta back when they’d first taken to the wastes and the chime of gunfire waiting in the distance. 

It was, even for Tyreen Calypso, difficult to not cherish a sick maybe-Siren Fate had obligated her to care for. She didn’t even think of Fate as being a bastard for sticking her with Troy. First of all, she didn’t believe in Fate. Second, would she have rather had a healthy sister? Well, d’uh. She’d fantasized about it even and to the point in her life where the fantasies got sexual, and again about blonde girls for some reason. Oops. In the morning, she still had Troy. He more than did. At least now that he did her, anyway.

She should not have been thinking about his cock while said cock was in another car.

She also should not have suddenly realized the Catter was kind of pretty and demonstrably blonde. Too bad Tyreen’s Leech immediately identified her as food. Annoying food too. A salesman, a varkid, a manta that wanted to sniff her crotch. Hey, that last wasn’t too far off.

Unlike Troy.

The rain beat down, reeking of desert and gunk. Tyreen rubbed her thighs together on the turns even if it made her asshole ache. The  _ urge _ and a few of her own thrummed and beat and whistled. She came for a change, but dammit, she came on Pandora. It was pretty swell.

And happened right before the truck splattered to a stop, mud purling up the sides, almost to the gun loops. While a fair amount of the Exotics took their exceptional time checking their weapons for stains, Tyreen whirled herself through a series of twist poses on the too-clean floor, stretching her muscles out like that and trying not to yawn, or come again, in the fantastic ease of moving on her own time. 

The back door of the truck rolled up. Before the clang had gotten itself over with, one of the other would-be gunners called back, “Hey, what’s up?” A few of the others nodded along, invested in this point.

Vincent rapped the door bar. “Brunch time, kids.”

“Brunch time?” Tyreen cut in. She jerked her head towards the loop she had claimed. The unchanged scenery could make the point for her. “We just left.” She meant, to herself anyway, that she certainly hadn’t had time to mull over anything complicated. That and the  _ urge _ felt neither closer nor stronger nor much of anything besides as  _ urgy _ as it had been before.

Nonetheless, Vincent raised one of his immaculately-groomed eyebrows at her. “ _Just_ _left_? What have you been doing for the past five hours? Jerking off?”

(Elsewhere, the truck bed twittered. “Five hours? How many ‘health shots’ did the lead car take?” / “A few! Ugh, I’m starved.” / “I hope it’s not hamburger and noddles. I am so beefed out.”)

“Yes,” said Tyreen. 

“She’s kidding. She’s had her gun out the loop the whole time. Kinda surprised she can move.” The person who’d stood opposite Tyreen said.

Vincent moved over Tyreen’s way, arms crossed and eyes flinty. He himself said, “Vibrator remote in your pocket?” with the same fraught mundanity the hamburger and noodles remark had gotten.

Tyreen meanwhile replied, “Well, now I know how you passed the time at that call center.”

“Call centers stink worse than skag piles. Never again. Fag?”

“I figured.”

“Oh that is rich coming from little miss I play banjo with my cousin.” A pack of cigarettes appeared anyway. They were the unfiltered kind that came double-wrapped in parchment with woodpecker seals and a big, cheeky one printed on the box itself.

Tyreen stood and accepted his offering in the form of three still in their box wrappings. She then blew Vincent a kiss on her jogging way out of the van. Laughter flowed behind her, but everyone was punchy and hungry and up to that all through the mealtime excitement. The howitzer team had already started on arcing out the rain shield. It was also barely drizzling. 

Her head was maybe still back at that place she’d left behind. Most days, memory hardly crossed her. That was before and her veins were full of now. 

Anyway, she found a likely looking car, popped the hood and leaned over the fuel vapors to light up her woodpecker cigarette once she’d carefully peeled up the bill of the sticker, then ripped the head off of the bird otherwise. Tyreen stayed under the hood to smoke since the cigarette itself didn’t taste convincingly different than the lingering fumes.

What was Vincent playing at giving somebody he wasn’t interested in cigarettes? Well, he might have been sideways gunning for Troy, might have heard a thing or two about how she enjoyed strong flavors that weren’t food-food from her brother last night while Troy was high and she was sucking the life out of screaming skags.

She could go for another den right about then, but when could she not? 

Tyreen pushed her sense of life out of herself and down into the soupy desert dells. Bright blobs of people took up most of nearby, enticing and vibrant and off the menu. Some insectoid with larvae that only came up after a rain was rushing to life in the majority of the nearby puddles, plenty of weird funguses and slimes too. A stray rakk swooped nearby to no sign of a hive.

She sensed it circling once, circling twice, then fading out of being as she took to counting the Exceptional Exotics. Hmm. There were definitely more than there should be and spread too wide outside of the growing rain shield. 

Clearly, the crew was not alone in these here hills. 

She should tell somebody.

Tyreen finished her cigarette first. Everyone was armed enough to defend their damn selves and her smoke just wouldn’t taste the same if she put it out, then relit it. Besides,  _ she _ wasn’t getting any supper until after dark. She wanted something to stave off her essence munchies and she wanted it right then. She also left the hood on the car up as she finished, her senses still up and all of her potential meals bobbing around her like camera flash afterimages in a glistening flush of people she couldn’t eat.

She walked right into a couple snaps of gunfire. 

Well, dinner might not be accessible for a lot more hours, but at least she had something to do. Tyreen slung her gun into her grasp and ambled towards the sound. 

Nobody ran. A few people stuck their heads out of the car windows to get a glimpse of the matter, but once the banging died down and didn’t start up again? Hell, there wasn’t even any shouting to be had. Just yep, firearms discharge, it’s fine.

And Tyreen noticed besides, she’d sure as hell gotten a lot more attention than her one little fart of shots. There was one shout about you got him, answered with yes. Part of the local life split off, backed off into the wet stone as Tyreen came around the corner.

So all at least had not been gotten, but more to the present.

A Psycho lay sprawled in a patch of bullety mud, a rip of holes across his shoulders and his neck. He had “You want a Hot dog Oh yes I Feel *IT* too!!!” written on his torso. This was surprisingly legible. His mask had a blue handprint on it, cut so that his septum piercing showed through where a wedding band could have gone, except at the wrong angle.

Lotty bent over the body, tapping their foot. One of the drivers was still trying to shake the recoil from their Torgue out of their hand. Colonel Admusik stomped in on this scene with a couple of onlookers in tow. She sighed like a disappointed dad, shaking her head.

“Found this skulking around the fuel tanks with a buzz axe,” Lotty explained. The buzz axe itself had landed an awful lot of yards off and was still trying to buzz as the wiring crackled and spat.

“Poor wretch,” tut-tutted the colonel. “Troy, would you clean this up?”

“On it!” Troy jogged his way around the insubstantial collection of gawpers. He crouched by the body and prodded with his own gun, lacking a stick and all.

Lotty stabbed a penny-ring-slathered hand at the corpse as they addressed the commander. “Actually, can I sit this one out? I think I know that guy.”

“You always think you know that guy,” countered Biscuits from the background where he was very clearly trying to get a picture of the scene rather than assist with any corpse moving. 

“I got around back in the day. Not as much as I do with you guys ‘cause you never, you know, take the time to stop and try to piss on the moon.”

“You worry me.”

“Only worry if they manage to hit the moon,” Troy said mildly. He had so far retrieved a collection of sharpened bones and a plastic raver pacifier from the Psycho. As he reached into one of his many and various pockets, he added. “Oh, this is a grenade.”

The colonel sighed again, flipping her hair back and moving to stalk off. As she passed Tyreen, she made a somewhat unsubtle follow me gesture with her shoulder.

Still, Tyreen could have pretended not to notice. She was though somewhat more interested in what the woman had to say than being obstinate. That, and maybe it would make things easier as far as shirking brunch went.

They got a good dozen yards off and into a whiff of griddle smell before Admusik said, “Interesting,” and canted her gaze towards Tyreen.

“Yeah? I mean, that’s real nice handwriting for a Psycho markering himself in a piece of sheet metal.”

“That’s respectable handwriting for a Psycho, period. Your thoughts?”

“There’s probably more,” as a matter of fact, Tyreen was currently estimating five additional interlopers based on the vibrations skimming the border of the caravan. “Maybe put extra people on your rear guard.” 

“Already done.”

“Maybe put me on the rear guard?” All the better to gobble them up and then say why no Colonel she hadn’t seen a soul out here in the damp desert after all.

“Perhaps, in time,” said Admusik. She then rolled her shoulder at Tyreen one more time. “You should eat something. There’s no meat on you. Jerky?”

“Not my thing.”

“Cake, the opposite of jerky?”

“Fine. I guess I could go read some cake in my underwear. Maybe eat a book too.”

“Ah, Tyreen, Tyreen.” All exasperation posed, there was almost a laugh in there someplace.

And Tyreen definitely was gifted a slice of cake. Cake was not something she knew about, but there was something distinctly cheap about the blue of the icing, cheeky too given that Admusik had chosen the  _ blue _ piece rather than any of the several pink pieces from the stack of plastic cake boxes taking up a corner of the walk-in. Still Tyreen admired and inspected it as a matter of show before heading back to the van.

She was going to read an actual book while down to her underwear, she decided. Everybody else had gotten to frolic in their skivvies. Why not her? Besides, Troy had parked on the edge of the caravan and that made for a good observation point as far as their little group of interlopers went.

Anyway, the rain was picking up again. The air wisped around her in a swirling circuitous way.

Tyreen smelled something botanical and bloody, a bit like powder, but also like an open body. Her mouth ran before she became quite conscious of anything shifting inside of her and she pressed the box to her chest. She was swiping at her drool when she caught sight of her across the puddled-up hardpan.

She saw the Psycho as cytoplasm and light, brighter than she should have been where the others had fled down to specks in the distance already. This one though was a jello cup of a presence, waiting and wiggling.

Tyreen decided to leave her. She might be able to slip off and eat her later. She might just run off with the others and not bother another body that day.

Anyway, she straightened her grip on the cake box and walked the rest of the way to the van that happened to be hers out of all the other vans. On the way, she spit twice and still licked her lips wet.

Her mind, half-tripped from introspection, crept off for another moment. She saw a rift in the ceiling of a temple back on Nekrotafeyo, heard air coral rustling there before she pulled herself back to the present, scratching absently at the bottom of her stomach until she pressed her fingers to the wet door handle. Then, she saw that Troy had set the LEDs to light red and that wouldn’t do. She countered with magenta and stretched out on the mattress that smelled like the two of them.

Troy showed up not all that long later. He had a mayonnaise stain on his shirt and his own three-wrapper of Vincent cigarettes. “So how’s the food?” he asked, kidding she thought since he’d already been involved with food.

“Good question,”

Tyreen, feeling eccumentical, cracked the box open and tongued the cake. She felt the sugar in it up to her eyeballs. Memories of plum shits or not, she almost wanted to eat said cake. Instead, she watched Troy do it as the rain beat down and her butt continued to disagree with its own existence.


End file.
